Cyclothymia
by Nagia
Summary: Old, tired, and dying, Yuffie looks back on the harder times with Vincent. [YV]


**title:** Cyclothymia  
**rating:** Teen/PG-13, for vocabulary and themes.  
**wordcount:**  
**theme:** 52flavours: 2 - the cruelest month  
**fandom:** FFVII  
**pairing:** Yuffie/Vincent  
**summary:** Old, tired, and dying, Yuffie looks back on the harder times with Vincent.  
**notes:** Because, damnit, I wanted to write gothic horror! With hot Asian chicks! And no actual horror or gothicness. I actually pictured most of what she's describing taking place in Nibelheim Mansion. Nyah NYAH.

_Cyclothymia: relating to or being an affective disorder characterized by the alternation of depressed moods with elevated, expansive, or irritable moods without psychotic feature._

I am dying, and I am alone, and I am not and never will be afraid. Not of him, not of you, not of death or for my children or for my country.

I remember what I'm talking about. I'm not some senile old crone, I **know what I'm saying**, I know when and where and who I am. If I get mushy or descriptive, it's because I frigging want to, not because my brain's firing off crazy and I'm spouting whatever it comes up with. Being with Vincent meant reading the dictionary sometimes, and damn if I'm not going to show it off now. I don't have a hell of a lot else to do.

And yes, baby, we fought. We fought and we fought and we fought. We fought until you all cried sometimes, fought until Tifa and Cloud got involved. But there were good times, too. There were good times.

On the good days, there lay between us a light, companionable silence. A near silence, really, because as quiet as he was, I was never so quiet. That came much, much later.

His sighs and mumbled half-words, shifts of his weight or expression, communicated impossibly well. Every half smile or smirk, the wrinkles that appeared around his eyes-- these were lessons in vocabulary I quickly learned, loving it more every minute. I gladly learned to interpret his muted (though not actually silent, NEVER actually SILENT), understated, not-quite-speech.

He loved to run his hands along the contours of my face, and I loved to run my hands through his hair. Smiles stole across my face, twitching my lips and revealing my teeth. His lips would quirk in respsonse, and that deep, bubbling joy felt like it would last forever.

It didn't, of course. There are only twenty-four hours in a day.

On the bad days, our fights were bloodier and more bitter than any other meaningless war. My voice was always so loud in those dark halls, echoing harsh and cracked and grating-- you're not, why won't, please, I-- and his was always so terribly quiet. His voice was always so quiet.

His were the hoarse half-whispers, always so terribly, terribly, frightfully and heartstoppingly quiet. I always strained to hear, my eyes red from crying and my heart in bloody tatters. My breath would come ragged and shallow, my legs twitching from the need to run away, my hands curling into fists at the need to beat some sense into him. 

Listening was bad enough, but worst of all, I WANTED to listen. He could make me lean in to hear words that drove splinters through my ears.

He could make me try desperately to hear words I knew would break my heart.

After that came the silence. We drifted through halls I had once cheerfully painted and decorated and patched up. Not a word-- not one, not even PORTIONS of "pass the butter" or "get out"-- made it past his lips.

I retreated into noise, chattering and babbling and making things worse by being obnoxious as hell. I went frantic or manic during those weeks, painting things bright colours or fixing things around the house or throwing myself into some pointless project. Whatever I did, it wasn't quiet, it wasn't serene, and it wasn't something hurting women usually did.

Those silences lasted for days. Weeks. Months was a rarity, but it happened. Day after day until it had passed, him saying nothing and me talking nonsense. Day after day in a house so old the dust was dusty, with ringing silences that reverberated in every room.

Day... after day... after day... piling up paint and poison.

Once we had both worked through our Very Own Personal Straits Of Whatever, the silence turned friendly again. He started using one word sentences-- "..." became "butter" or "out"-- and I stopped talking about squirrels. I stopped grinning and started smiling, stopped painting things that didn't need painting; he opened the drapes in his room and put the dusty depressing books in a far-away corner of the library.

During those times, fights were minor tiffs. Petty disagreements. Cruel words were never his usual weapons (he preferred glares and moody silences, the great big gothic hero-anti-hero GOON), but during those times, no disagreement would make him speak.

Frankly, we were despicably nice to each other. Supercilous. All that saccharine whatever inside us burned like poison, until we both had forked tongues.

After a while, even the friendliest-- and even the genuinely friendliest-- of silences can cut like knives.

Once that passed (and it was usually only a week or so, it never lasted as long as the noisy angry silences), it was back to the good days. I talked, he answered. I danced and hummed and sang and pretended he would understand, rather than just chalk it up to me being me.

He smiled, sometimes, and stroked my hair, and we murmured conversations.

Of course, somewhere in all that lay the seeds for our bitter screaming matches. And when those seeds were sown and reaped, it all started over again.

Sometimes, I think I painted to hide the blood on the walls.


End file.
